The US National Security Agency uncovered conversations in January about an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) terror plot targeting the Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army through the bombing of Fort McNair in Washington, in apparent retaliation for the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in early 2020.

Thankfully, the discovery and exposure have probably put the kibosh on this particular threat, but former Vice President of the European Parliament Alejo Vidal-Quadras warned that Iran-backed terrorism still poses a major threat and will do so until all major Western powers address it.

Of course, as Vidal-Quadras pointed out, some politicians have tried to downplay the threat as an outlier, but this is nothing new. In 2018 alone, the regime attempted to bomb a Free Iran rally in Paris and the Resistance headquarters in Albania. Thankfully, both were thwarted.

The Paris plot, conducted by an Iranian diplomat in Europe with the help of three accomplices, was the subject of a recent trial that saw all four jailed for between 15 and 20 years each. The prosecutor in the case said that diplomat Assadollah Assadi was working on behalf of the regime’s highest-ranking officials, while the Iranian-European organization, the Alliance for Public Awareness, said this would have been “one of the bloodiest terrorist events in European history”.

The confiscated explosive device was powerful enough to kill hundreds in the initial blast, mostly the politicians and human rights experts that were sat in the same section as National Could of Resistance of Iran President-elect Maryam Rajavi, who was the intended target. However, it is likely that an ensuing stampede or even a building collapse could have killed thousands.

Vidal-Quadras wrote: “Unfortunately, the EU turned a blind eye to Assadi’s conviction. In February 2021, the International Committee in Search of Justice released a statement condemning the European silence, and I said [that] the silence of the European External Action Service and their blatant attempts to appease this terrorist regime are a disgrace and place EU citizens at risk from future attacks.”

He explained that all Western nations have emboldened Iran’s recent terrorist plots because of the appeasement policy pursued over the past four decades that has helped the regime evade accountability.

Vidal-Quadras wrote: “This must be rectified immediately and comprehensively with coordinated sanctions and diplomatic pressure, or else that chatter that the NSA picked up in January will continue repeating until disaster strikes.”